Two yeasts one beer ?

My friend and I brewed an IPA two and a half weeks ago and our LHBS only had two packs of the yeast we wanted to use when we needed four (no time for starter on this one unfortunately had to fork out the extra $). We split the 10 gallon batch into two 6.5 carboys and one carboy used wyeast (1968) london ESB and the other we used british ale (wyeast 1098). We just racked both to separate secondaries and they are completely different colors. The london esb one looks, smells, and tastes like a pale ale should. The british ale one looks sorta like a hefe and doesn't taste like I imagined it would. Anyone have experience with the british ale yeast? Also, is it normal for two different yeasts to produce such different colored beer using the same wort?

Thanks

crlova2 said:

The british ale one looks sorta like a hefe and doesn't taste like I imagined it would. Anyone have experience with the british ale yeast? Also, is it normal for two different yeasts to produce such different colored beer using the same wort?

Thanks

Click to expand...

I can't comment on those two yeasts since I have never used them, but I believe what you are seeing is that one yeast was a lot more flocculant than the other. The british one sounds like it still has a lot of yeast in suspension and that is making it cloudy and appear lighter in color.

When the british yeast finally settles, you will probably have two batches of beer that are the same color, but they will almost certainly not taste the same.

Sounds pretty cool lets us know how it works out in the end as far as tastes

Pretty much what Walker said sounds right. I have used the 1968 before and it ferments fast and flocculates like crazy. My ESB was crazy clear after 5 days in primary. It seriously looked like I had already cold crashed it. Give the batch with the 1098 some time to floc out and the color should look the same.

On the Wyeast site it list the flocculation properties of 1968 as "Very High" and 1098 as "Med-High". Give it some time and cold crash it

Thanks for the input everyone!

Both great yeasts!
1968 will finish a bit maltier, 1098 a bit dryer, in my experience

starrfish said:

1968 will finish a bit maltier

Click to expand...

So, is that maltier as in less hop-forward? Does it lend a graham-cracker/Ovaltine kind of flavor?

I use 1968 for some english porters & most of my esb's.

Yes, definitely less hop forward. A subtle graham cracker/ovaltine flavor... I hadn't thought about it like that, but I think that might be a good comparison. I've always said it was a round, slightly sweet malt (slightly fruity/good twangy which graham cracker/ovaltine has), with warm bread flavor. I've never been able to truly nail it down.

I do back off on crystal malts a bit when using this yeast, b/c it tends to enhance the crystal malts flavor, esp since I've moved to Marris Otter as my base grain.

It does blow very strong pear esters when fermenting and some of the esters do tend to stick around. I don't have anything I could check against right now but, I should have an ESB coming up in the late fall. (unless my buddy brews an ESB sooner than I do.) Looking forward to using both these yeasts again in the fall when I can ship yeast through the mail again.

I may resurrect this post when I have something to compare it to.